Don’t Run Next To Me!

Had a good time at the gym tonight, one of the reasons being that there were very few people. 🙂 It’s a three-day weekend here in Japan so I guess many went on mini-vacations.

There was zero waiting time for any of the machines. Even the running machines—which are usually filled on weekday nights—were pretty much empty. There was an entire empty row so I decided to run in the middle.

I actually don’t like running next to strangers.

I try not to look at the next runner but since the screens are so large…I am rather uneasy when I can clearly see that everyone else is running faster than I am. When it’s a college-age girl going 10km/h I’m a little bit annoyed but don’t really mind; I mean, I would have run like that at her age! But when it’s some fat, middle-aged woman (like me) doing the 10km/h thingy, I’m like, “Oh no, I’m being left behind!” kind of desperate.

However, all the years, decades really, of not exercising has taken a toll on my body. I know I shouldn’t push the speed thing too hard otherwise I’ll slip or trip or do some other stupid thing. I think the important thing now is not so much to run fast but to keep up a constant speed (in my case, 6-7km/h) for all of the allotted 30min. Right now I take a few minutes break in between (5.5km/h) to rest, drink water and wipe off sweat. Next month I hope the need to do this becomes less frequent. As for doing a 10km/h, maybe in a few years!

Now regarding the title of this post. I was doing my running thing when then this young man started to run right next to me. Hey, there’s a whole row of empty machines. Why do you have to pick the machine next to mine? Ugh!

Anyway, I said to myself “Don’t. Look. At. His. Screen.”

And I didn’t. Not once. Yey! +1 my willpower 🙂

Pool exercise was mostly the same as yesterday: breathing drills in Lesson 3 of the Total Immersion Swimming: Perpetual Motion Freestyle in Ten Lessons DVD.

But it was nice throughout as I had the lane mostly to myself. A rare and happy occasion! 🙂

I’m able to rotate to breathe on my back (flat or at the Skate angle) a little bit more easily now so I also concentrated on stroking and rolling to breathe in between.

One thing I really need to keep in mind is to maintain my head-spine alignment at all times. I often forget to keep my back straight and work my ab muscles (what little muscle there is) and clench my glutes. Doing these have got to become a habit otherwise I’ll never be able to solve the “always deep in the water” issue.

Tomorrow is no-pool/gym day, and Monday is a holiday so again, no-pool/gym. Group swimming class on Tuesday is when I can hit the pool again. Can’t do anything about not having a pool so instead I’ll watch the DVDs again and try do so some land exercises and visualization.